19 July 2018

Adam Morgan/Chicago Review of Books (#41)

The Dial bookshop hosted Adam Morgan (Editor-in-Chief of the Chicago Review of Books) and the Eye 94 crew for a talk about the Review's reprinting of The Cliff-Dwellers, a Chicago classic from 1893. Thank you Adam and thank you Dial!

15 July 2018

Sergio de la Pava (#40)

Great conversation with the author of A Naked Singularity, Personae, and most recently, Lost Empress. We talked NFL, US criminal justice system, Sergio's life as a New York City public defender, theoretical physics, Joni Mitchell, and social power structures. Thank you, Sergio!

21 June 2018

Megan Stielstra

It was the third Thursday of the month, and that meant our friends at Pilsen Community Books hosted another live show of Eye 94. This month we sat down with Megan Stielstra, author of The Wrong Way to Save Your Life, a collection of essays. The essays explore a variety of subjects, including fear, writing, teaching, gun violence, sex, failure, and more. One of the essays, "Here is My Heart", has been included in a three part series on gun violence at Longreads. Read that series here.

10 June 2018

Nafissa Thompson-Spires

Heads of the Colored People is the title of Thompson-Spires's new collection of stories, now out from Atria/37 INK. The stories explore the psychological and physical worlds of middle class black lives, often surrounded by a sea of white people.

3 June 2018

Jim Elledge

We phoned Jim in Kentucky to discuss his twenty-fourth book, The Boys of Fairy Town: Sodomites, Female Impersonators, Third-Sexers, Pansies, Queers, and Sex Morons in Chicago's First Century. Some great Chicago history in this one. Thanks, Jim!

17 May 2018

Dominic A. Pacyga

We were back at Pilsen Community Books for our monthly live show, this time featuring author and professor Dominic A. Pacyga and his new book, Slaughterhouse: Chicago's Union Stock Yard and the World it Made. Tune in to hear about the "squeal wheel", Dominic's time as a worker in the stockyards, labor union struggles, and the potential of livestock returning to the urban setting.

6 May 2018

Joe Peterson

In Peterson's Gunmetal Blue, detective Art Topp is grieving the grisly murder of his wife. We spoke with Joe about grief, gun violence, genre fiction, and the portrayal of the working class in literary fiction, among other things. Thanks, Joe!

15 April 2018

Jim Gauer

Jim Gauer wrote a novel called Novel Explosives. He woke up before the sunrise everyday for seven years to finish it. It's about a lot of things. Maximalist, many would call it. The subjects of artillery ammunition, poetry, corporate finance, drug trafficking, money laundering, Ciudad Juárez, drug cartels, pharmacology, Western philosophy, neuroscience, fiction, language, among others, are all explored in great detail within the narrative. The narrative: A man wakes up in Guanajuato, Mexico not knowing who he is or how he got there; a venture capitalist is struggling to write his memoirs of financial stardom; and two gunmen cross the U.S.-Mexico border from El Paso to Ciudad Juarez in search of an anonymous man they've been contracted to kill.

We spoke with Jim about books, Thomas Pynchon and the municipal water qualities of coastal California and Manhattan Beach, and his time spent in Juárez, Mexico researching for the novel.

29 March 2018

Michael P. Daley

We taped this show in front of a live audience at Pilsen Community Books. Michael's book, Bobby BlueJacket: The Tribe, The Joint, The Tulsa Underworld, is the result of five years' research and conversation with the subject himself. Bobby BlueJacket, an Eastern Shawnee Native American, was sentenced to 99 years in prison in 1948. Read the book for a ride on the BlueJacket wild side. Thank you, Michael!

11 March 2018

Gary Indiana

We called Gary in New York City to discuss the re-release of Three Month Fever from Semiotext(e). Three Month Fever chronicles the life of Andrew Cunanan and the US media circus in what Mr. Indiana has called pastiche form. Cunanan killed five men over a three month period in 1997 before killing himself. We all laughed a lot with each other. Inappropriate?

18 January 2018

Joe Allen

Author and activist Joe Allen joined us at Pilsen Community Books for a live taping of Eye 94. We discussed his books Vietnam: The (Last) War the U.S. Lost and People Wasn't Made to Burn: A True Story of Race, Murder, and Justice in Chicago. Thanks for coming out, Joe.

14 January 2018

Ivy Pochoda

We called up Ivy in Los Angeles to talk about Wonder Valley, her third novel, which takes place in: Los Angeles. Jamie gives a verbal reconstructive blueprint of the city; Ivy talks about her time as a professional squash player; Mike wonders what the differences between racquetball and squash are; Jeremy wants to know about Ivy's pet rabbits. And we all talk about her new novel, where five characters from five absurdly different walks of life all become intertwined in the search for meaning in their lives. Warning: drugs, sex, and violence. Thanks, Ivy!

7 January 2018

Archipelago Books

We speak with Kendall Storey, editor and publicist at Archipelago Books, about the Archipelago catalog. It was a pleasure, Kendall! Titles mentioned include: Sarajevo Marlboro by Milenko Jergovic (trans. by Stela Tomasevic), Nest in the Bones by Antonio Di Benedetto (trans. by Martina Broner), My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard (trans. by Don Bartlett), Incest by Christine Angot (trans. by Tess Lewis), and For Isabel: A Mandala by Antonio Tabucchi (trans. by Elizabeth Harris).